In the Indian subcontinent, the tradition of film festivals goes back to 1952, when the first International Film Festival of India (IFFI) took place, in Mumbai. It gave birth to a new league of Indian filmmakers, such as the Bengali trio Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak and Mrinal Sen, who would revolutionize Indian cinema, in the […]
Read More
Women centric films, in the garb of female empowerment, have become the new normal in Bollywood lately. Focusing on issues that women negotiate in today’s times, these films seek to provide a new ideological template by which they seek audiences’ indulgence in the dramaturgy they unspool through their women protagonists. Taking incidents from real life, […]
Read More
Man is a political animal. So reflected Aristotle. He went a step further to see politics and culture as by-products of nature. Man is given speech and moral reason as natural, inborn, gifts. So, any further device, or design, such as politics, must be natural, Aristotle thought. History is an interesting play of power – […]
Read More
August 1 this year saw journalist Ravish Kumar being awarded the 2019 Ramon Magsaysay Award—the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize—for “harnessing journalism to give voice to the voiceless.” That is the ideal with which I had joined journalism, this very month of 1978. More than 40 monsoons have gone by since I had crossed […]
Read More
Being an effective mass medium, cinema has for long been manipulated for the celebration of national pride and for the recognition of they who demonstrate the highest form of sacrifice and valour. The ‘soldier theme’ has been a favorite of quite a few popular Hindi filmmakers from JP Dutta to Anil Sharma. Subhash Ghai’s Karma […]
Read More
There are film directors who create film stars and then there are film directors who become stars themselves. Since cinema started as a means of business, stars and star film directors have both co existed. A star could not survive without a good film director but a star film director could thrive without stars. Each […]
Read More
Cinema has come a long way from a time when long dialogues struck gold at the box-office and cemented a struggling protagonist’s position as a dependable hero to a time when it is cool to be conversational. Alongside, the big screen has ceded much of its audience to the small screen. Clearly, it is not […]
Read More
Hindi films about Indians traveling abroad have captured the imagination of the audience – if the successes of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Queen are any indication. These films are targeted at metropolitan/ multiplex audiences, those likely to be more aligned with the global world than with rural India which is only […]
Read More
Stories narrated in a dramatic manner attract and engage the masses, especially those from the lower strata whose daily lives are filled with struggle. ‘Masala,’ ‘escapist fare’ offers them nostalgia, inspiration, strength and hope. For, the cinema crafted for them is kinder than their unchanging reality. This causal relationship between income class and preference for […]
Read More